Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/529

 ia.vn.Nov.27,tt2o.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

437

AUTHOR, WANTED : LINES ON NEBUCHAD- NEZZAR, (12 S. vii. 351). When, I was an, undergraduate (1856-60) the story ran that in 1852, when the subject for the Newdigate Prize was ' The Feast of Bel- shazzar' and the prizeman Edwin Arnold, there were a don and an undergraduate at Christ Church, I think it was, who had the same surname. The don was one of the judges, but the competing poems went by mistake to the undergraduate, who duly sent then on to the don, but first read them and took samples. One of the poems was said to have begun ;

Is Nimrod dead? Is Shalmaneser clay ? Is this the place where Esar-Haddon lay ? Other extracts were ;

f(a) The prophet casually observed in passing, It's merely MENE, TEKEL and UPHAKSIN.

<(&) King Nebuchadnezzar was turned out to grass With oxen, horses and the savage ass.

v(c) The passage partially quoted by T.S.O. The King surveyed the unaccustomed fare With an inquiring but disdainful air, And murmured, as he cropped the unwonted

food,

It may be eaten, but it is not good. F" T have never seen any of the lines in print There may have been more, which I never Jheard or have forgotten. They would almost certainly have been varied in the course oJ irepetition during sixty years.

JOHN R. MAGRATH. Queen's College, Oxford. .[See below, p. 439.]

LONDON INSURANCE COMPANIES ; BIBLIO <GRAPHY (12 S. vii. 388). Two books written to commemorate the Bi-centenary of th< Royal Exchange Assurance this year shoulc 'foe added to MR. ALECK ABRAHAM'S list ; '* The Royal Exchange.' A note on the occasion o

the Bicentary of the Royal Exchange Assurance

By A. E. W. Mason. 'Two Hundred \"ears ' (printed for private circula

tion). ByC. E. F.

Both are well illustrated and full o interest. R. H. ROBERTS.

Windermere, Hall Lane, Upminster.

SNIPE IN BELGRAVE SQUARE ( 12 S. vii. 390) My grandfather and grandmother usec to post up from their home in Hampshire to a house they rented in Cavendish Square -and the brother of the boy who rode pos tilion told me many years ago that hi brother often told him about going througl the very swampy ground now Belgrave .Square and then known as the Five Fields -He also said that he had been told that th

wamp was filled in with the earth, &c. aken up when the East India docks were xcavated. If this latter statement is orrect, it would show ab<jut the date when here were snipe in Belgrave Square, furiously eneugh my grandmother after- wards rented a house in Belgrave Square. Another record of game in London is to

e found in Pennant's 'London,' 3rd ed.

793,' p. 126 ;

" The late Carew Mildmay who after a long life ied a few years ago (1784) used to say that he emembered killing a woodcock on the site of Conduit Street, at that time an open country."

H. A. ST. J. M.

~lVlr. Henry Bickers, the founder of the publishing firm of Bickers & Son (late of L,eicester Square), told my father that as a ad he often went sniping over the Pimlico Marshes. My father was born in 1817 and was about twenty years younger than Mr. Bickers. HENRY W. BUSH.

A Mr. Tanner, a Custom House agent, one of the few who had the privilege of an office in the Long Room, told me about seventy years ago that he had shot a woodcock within three-quarters of a mile of the Royal Exchange. Tanner was then 88 years old.

O. S. T.

ELIZABETH (RUNDLE) CHARLES (12 S. iii. 414 : iv. 337 : vii. 396). In further reference to this gifted writer it may be mentioned that the 'D.N.B.' is in error when attributing to her the origin of the

Home of Peace" (now St. Columba's Hospital) in the Avenue Road, South Hampstead. She was, it is true, a noble benefactress thereof, but the Institution was, of course, founded by the late Miss Davidson, who laboured on behalf of this comforting shelter until quite recent years.

CECIL CLARKE.

CORNISH ACRES IN DOMESDAY (12 S. vii. 392). It may interest readers to know that in the Common Register of Bishop Lacy (of Exeter, 1420-55) on folio ccccxix. in the margin is a note " ferlingus terras continet 30 acras." HUGH R. WATKIN.

BEAUCLERC (12 S. vii. 391). A very good instance of such signatory marks was found recently among the Totnes Priory deeds in a collection at Torquay and is illustrated by a full plate in the second volume of 'The History of Totnes Priory and Medieval Town.' The parchment is a confirmation